Kidney stones rising in US, Keep yourself hydrated

In the US, the problem of Kidney stones rising in US day by day, among both men and women, a new study says.

This particular study, published on Monday this week in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, studies the predominance of kidney stones over a period of almost three decades — from 1984 to 2012 — among more than 10,000 residents of Minnesota.

Kidney stones have increased more than quadruple among women and more than double among men, the study revealed.

Young women aged between 18 to 39 had the immense increase in cases, jumping from 62 cases to directly 252 cases (per 100,000 person-years) from 1984 to 2012. One person/year is a year lived by every single person for the duration of the study.

“What we’re seeing is an interesting combination of things; certainly, they’ve gone up quite a bit both in men and women,”, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and a lead author of the study Dr. John Lieske stated the aforementioned.

“The absolute increase has been similar, but because women started out quite a bit lower 30 years ago, their proportion increases quite a bit more.”

Kidney stones are very common these days, hitting around 10% of the population at some point in their lives. Stones are caused by solid pieces of material that form in the kidney, ureters or bladder due to a number of genetic and environmental factors, Lieske had mentioned to Media. “A lot of it is related to genetics,” Dr. Lieske said. “Too much calcium in the urine is certainly a factor in many of these patients but not all of them, and then there are other things that come into play related to diet and not drinking enough fluids.”

How Hydrated are you?

Kidney stones are particularly very unpleasant and can cause “renal colic” that comes in waves and spreads from the lower back to the inner thigh, according to one of the very well known doctors, Dr. Ralph Clayman, a professor of urology at the University of California, Irvine and an expert on kidney stone disease.

“They call it male childbirth,” said Clayman, who was not involved in the study. “It’s extremely, excruciatingly painful. Renal colic is very painful, and a lot of times, people need opioids in order to manage the pain.”

Lieske advises us that the consequences of the new study we have just made may not be generalizable to all Americans.

“Kidney stones as a group are more common in whites in particular, which was about 90% of the population” that the researchers studied, Lieske added. “We wouldn’t be able to comment as much on some of the other ethnic groups, though. I think that would be an open question.”

About the author

Amber Martinson

She lives in Detroit Michigan. She is pursuing a degree in Sports Science at Detroit State University where he is also a linebacker at the football team. She has written several articles on fitness and loves motivating and helping young males on the streets.